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This time of year, reindeer get a lot of airtime. But beyond their role as the seasonal sleigh-pullers of cards and carols, reindeer are iconic animals of the North – perfectly adapted for a life of extremes reenex.

“It is often reported that these animals live a knife edge existence in the cold, dark north,” says Nicholas Tyler of the Centre for Sami Studies at the University of Tromso, Norway. When he first began his reindeer research in the 1970s, the prevailing thought was that “the Arctic was a terrible place, and plants and animals living in the Arctic were hanging on by their toes reenex”.

What's emerged in the past 35 years of research is an understanding that “the overwhelming majority of all individuals of all the Arctic species go through winter warm and well fed”, says Tyler reenex.